The optical properties of both the annealed and as-deposited ZnO thin films by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering on SiO2 substrates were studied. In the annealed films, two pronounced well defined exciton absorption peaks for the A and B excitons were obtained in the absorption spectra, a strong free exciton emission without deep-level emissions was observed in the photoluminescence (PL) spectra at room temperature. It was found that annealing the films in oxygen dramatically improved the optical properties and the quality of the films.